Livelihoods are the means people use to support themselves, to survive, and to prosper. Livelihoods are an outcome of how and why people organize to transform the environment to meet their needs through technology, labor, power, knowledge, and social relations. Livelihoods are also shaped by the broader economic and political systems within which they operate.
Water is the essential element in rural livelihoods because of the food security and income options it generates in rainfed and irrigated crop production, industry, domestic processing, aquaculture, livestock, recreation, navigation and transport, and electricity supply. Safe water and sanitation also shape health through potable water supply, safe food preparation, hygiene, better nutrition, and relaxation. Environmental security depends on peoples’ actions to control salinity, drainage, and water pollution; manage droughts and floods; and manage land and water to guard those resources.
Unless there is new action to recognize both the roles water plays in rural livelihoods and people’s capacity to manage their water sustainably and with social justice, water scarcity threatens to change people’s options in production, employment, and exchange, and the relations among these activities, in ways that will exclude the small producer. For example, in Zimbabwe, new smallholder irrigation systems are being developed and old ones are receiving new support that can improve water supply and livelihoods for more people. However, irrigators must also now renegotiate water rights in the face of growing competition for water and new water legislation to promote more integrated water resources management. While there is still scope for improving livelihoods in irrigation and aquaculture, emerging competition for water will drive water users to defend and negotiate their water rights when their livelihoods are threatened. Water scarcity increases the need for pro-poor development support.
Improved access to water is a powerful tool to diversify livelihoods and reduce vulnerability for small producers (see Box). Low prices, fluctuating markets, adverse tenancy, and insufficient labor can all explain why small farmers must engage in diverse livelihood strategies; they cannot survive from agricultural activities alone, even with better water husbandry. As water users, small farmers value their water access for its contribution to income, household needs, and the social networks and entrepreneurship it supports. Many argue that new opportunities still exist to help small farmers gain better livelihoods despite water scarcity and to build a more vibrant local economy around them. Indeed, it is essential to prioritize small farmers’ water access in the interests of reducing poverty, vulnerability, and social injustice.
Transforms Rural Livelihoods
- Production options in farmlands and home gardens for food, cash crops, and livestock extend across the year; yields and output improve for home consumption and sale.
- Employment for families, with and without land, increases; more local people are employed in operation of water systems and in agroprocessing; and livelihood options in fishing, tourism, and recreation emerge.
- Health improves through access to safe domestic water supply and sanitation.
- Opportunities to exchange gifts of food and seed and to build social networks increase.
- Participation in water committees widens social networks and empowers people.
- Farmers spend additional income locally, improving markets for goods and services.
- When women control outputs, they spend more on family welfare.
- Raise local value-per-drop of water. New technologies and production systems can promote the manufacture of high-value products locally. Programs can maximize employment through developing a range of productive enterprises and involving local people in construction and operation of systems. Planners can use water systems as “growth points” where services, markets, and employment are also stimulated. New methods are under development for assessing the value of water to small producers, including “water and well-being” indicators.
- Create and manage community-based water assets through small water points, water harvesting, or better soil and water management. Initiatives can also build disaster preparedness, use short-term relief measures that build water assets, and work to break the link between ill health and poor water management.
- Allocate water in a way that creates roles for and empowers excluded groups, with a special focus on opportunities for women. Techniques to assess water use and value at the system and basin levels can aid decision-making about remaining water development options.
- Improve services through more accountability to water users in public and private water services, and through recognizing unregistered and excluded users, especially when they are poor.
These initiatives can work well in localized programs focused on specific water systems and watersheds. However, some water scarcity conditions and production transformations threaten to provoke struggle on a larger scale and require action of a different kind.
When people build their livelihoods around water, they create relationships of cooperation and control in order to acquire and manage water systems, link with government and the private sector, broaden opportunities, and strengthen their negotiating power. How livelihoods survive under scarcity is related to how people understand water scarcity, organize social action to remedy it, and act to defend their rights.
“Livelihood thinking,” which developed in the 1980s as an alternative to “production thinking,” challenged beliefs about the neutrality of technology and the absolute ability of experts to promote optimal production systems. It also required a new professionalism to make resource management and technology serve small farmers. Livelihood thinking involves understanding water environments and technologies; understanding and working with the political processes through which local groups can question water assessment and allocation mechanisms, including “expert” solutions; and working directly with small farmers. This shift in orientation can foster local water-control initiatives that support users in negotiating their rights to water and livelihoods—within both water-basin and local water systems. Livelihood thinking builds key design skills, communication and management capacities, and principles for collaboration on new actions that promote:
- Diversity in ecology, livelihood strategies, and water institutions. This includes participatory design and agro-ecological planning that builds on the knowledge and management capacities of users; strategic targeting of niche markets and production; and working with alternative production and construction systems to help maximize biomass productivity, equity, local employment, and use of local materials.
- Fair and sustainable water delivery. To resolve water scarcity issues, livelihood thinking seeks to understand the opportunities and needs created by different water technologies and institutions, and the interactions between them, given available water supply.
- Water-management reform negotiations. Empowering local groups and evolving user-sensitive water assessment tools can help build new multi-stakeholder platforms and institutions between local and catchment levels.
Creative thinking coupled with effective negotiation have already brought about new livelihoods for people in peri-urban settlements, in irrigation systems with temporal scarcities, in watersheds with new water harvesting options, and in systems and basins where water trading takes place. The combination has also yielded new rights for those previously excluded from formal recognition and has helped people explore local options before pursuing major changes in allocations between sectors or users.
People are working in many ways at the local level to get access to water without giving up or giving in to the external water-crisis rhetoric. Thinking about livelihoods from the perspective of water can guide system redesign and allocations that retain local options, generate higher local value, and empower local management. However, understanding the processes that enable small water users to build and defend more secure livelihoods from water is also vital for new negotiation over water use. The water management principles that will help water users to negotiate their livelihoods under water scarcity are:
- Institutional viability that sustains water organizations, system operations, and water use practices;
- Equity that reflects access and social justice for water users;
- Political democracy that represents many different stake-holder groups;
- Economic viability that creates financially sound and economically viable livelihoods;
- Productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency based on locally valid criteria that ensure the integrity of hydraulic infra-structure and the value of land and water;
- Secure water access that includes the possibility of negotiating water-use rights and managing risks from system or production failure;
- Ecological equilibrium that builds sustainable water use and fights degradation.
Designers, planners, and managers can support rural livelihoods when dealing with water scarcity by appreciating the many roles of water in rural livelihoods and giving rural users scope to negotiate and defend their livelihoods.
For further information see Boelens, R. and G. Davila. Searching for Equity: Conceptions of Justice and Equity in Peasant Irrigation Systems. Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum Publishers, 1998.; Datye, K. R., S. Paranjape, and K. J. Joy. “Regenerative Agriculture and Rural Development in India: A New Paradigm,” in P. Mollinga, ed., Water for Food and Rural Development: Approaches and Initiatives in South Asia. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000.; Meinzen-Dick, R. and B. Bruns. Negotiating Water Rights. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000.; Vincent, L., N. Haslip, and K. Hussein. Poverty Alleviation and Irrigated Agriculture. IPTRID Issues Paper 1. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1999.
Linden Vincent (Linden.Vincent@users.tct.wau.nl) is professor of irrigation and water engineering at Wageningen University, The Netherlands.